5 things you didn’t know about “Dead And Alive”

2. Vocal recordings

Back in 2017 the main vocals were recorded in our former bassist’s studio that he was building into an old, abandoned barn in a forest near our hometown. Because of its location there were no fortified roads nor streetlights and at the time of the vocal recordings even the barn itself didn’t have lights. Most of the vocal recordings happened late at night so it was always a kind of eerie feeling to make the way through the forest and do the vocal recordings in a barn in the middle of nowhere. Here’s a short clip from the vocal recordings of “Red Wine Collider”:

3. Empty Streets and Alive

Here’s a little secret that was never revealed in any interview before: During the writing process of a possible title track for the yet unnamed album, there was some back and forth between an initial idea to call that song “Dead but Alive” or maybe something like “Empty Streets”. But after doing some research it turned out that there already was a song called “Empty Streets” from another band called “Scandroid” - I guess you can imagine where this is going from here. “Dead but Alive” later turned into “Dead and Alive” and “Empty Streets” became our first officially recorded cover song.

A remnant of that process can be heard in the first verse of the lyrics where it goes like “and I’m out, straining through these empty nights alone”. The line was originally written as “and I’m out, straining through these empty streets alone”.

4. POV Rollercoaster

Once the album was done it was decided that “Headfuck Rollercoaster” should become the first single for the release of “Dead and Alive”. To save some time and work, our label offered us to hire a guy who should take care of a lyric video for the song. However, the first preview of his vision (containing flying sperm and random images - he obviously didn't get the lyrics!) was not exactly what we were looking for. But see for yourself in this unreleased preview:

5. Mixing the album

The final mixing of “Dead and Alive” was done at Benjamin’s newly built basement studio. After “Time Tears Down” was mixed in a bedroom (which could be best described as “a mixing engineer’s worst nightmare”), Benjamin built a great sounding room into his basement that made things a lot easier for us - and there even were cookies.